Missing

Chapter Seventeen

David, Maria and Rachel sat at the kitchen table, sharing from a central platter of meats, cheeses, breads and dried fruit while they sipped tea from mugs. Bethia came in from serving customers and joined them. "Have you figured out yet how to shoot images with the camera?"

"We've shot a roll, developed the film, and the negatives are now dry and ready to be enlarged and printed," David said. "We're delighted with the project thus far."

"So quickly? You amaze me."

"Much of it was already familiar to me — the theory and the basic practices. It was simply a matter of my learning how to use these particular devices."

"Besides being intuitive, he's also a brilliant thinker, inventive and devastatingly handsome." Maria chuckled as she looked up from her tea.

"I've no dispute with any of that," Rachel said. "When will you be ready to do my ankle images?"

"We need some broad surgical tape to replicate the support binding pattern. We left our repair and maintenance tin in the rucksacks up on the granite rib." Maria looked at Bethia. "Have you any, Tante?"

"I've a small roll of narrow strip I use when I've cut myself, though I haven't used it in a very long time."

"We need about three metres of broad," David said.

"Erzingen Apotheke is only a block along the Hauptstraße. You should find some there. They're open Mondays."

After lunch, David and Rachel went up to the room while Maria headed out to fetch the tape. "The first image Maria wants is of your ankle elevated and wrapped in a cold compress. We don't need wet or cold, simply a wrapped towel to give the illusion."

He looked around. "We can stack two cushions from the settee and rest your foot on that. You can remove your boot, lie on the floor and hoist your skirts to your knee. I'll get a towel."

She was ready when he returned from the bathroom. He wrapped her foot in the towel and adjusted the camera on the table. After tilting the lens down to centre the ankle in the viewfinder, he depressed the cable release and heard the click of the shutter. "That's that one done."

As he was removing the towel, Maria came in with the roll of tape. "Great timing. We've just finished the first one."

"You apply the tape again, David," Maria said as she handed him the roll. "You did it so well the first time,"

He unrolled a half metre piece and tore it off, then straddling Rachel's leg, he placed its centre under her heel and extended the ends up the sides of her calf. As he was applying the first diagonal, Rachel said, "This is much less exciting than when you did it in the mountains, David, with your dangling parts swinging like pendulums in front of my face as you worked."

He chuckled. "We were still dressed for the thermal pool. We had an emergency to care for and no time to dress. That seems so long ago now. Seems so far away."

As he was completing the pattern with the third piece, Maria said, "We should take a photo of that now, just as it is. This will clearly show the diagonal pattern of the tapes. I can describe the rest of the binding we had used to maintain pressure." She stepped to the camera, turned it slightly to centre the image, advanced the film and depressed the shutter.

"That was easy," Rachel said. "Are you finished with me now?"

Maria looked at David, then at Rachel. "I think so. I can't think of any other images except the crutches and cane, and we don't need you for those."

After he had peeled the tape off Rachel's ankle and she had left, he stood the crutches against the backdrop, with the cane beside them. "We'll have difficulty being artistic with this shot."